A set of principles, based on nature & its natural systems, to create sustainable homes, communities and food production to better support mankind.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

9/11 - My path to Permaculture

I must start by letting you know I have not had good REM sleep in over a week, I actually can't remember the last time I did. That's how this all started as well, in a dream.

I was dreaming next to my wife in California, it's early and I had just quit a very large video game company in Silicon Valley, won awards in the company etc. I was looking forward to working as an Art Director for a MMORPG created by Brinestone Entertainment. We had an amazing budget that included a motion capture studio, an art team with Maya software, etc. 10 years ago this was a dream job, with a 100,000$ a year salary. However, I suddenly started hearing screams in my dream, that so many screams I awoke.

My wife was still sleeping, in fact everyone in my shared apartment was. I flipped on the TV mumbling something is wrong, and there I saw it, my home, my city that I grew up in... ..on fire with a plane in it. Then suddenly, live, right before my eyes I saw the 2nd plane strike the tower and I thought we were at war. I started weeping like a child at what I saw. My family & friends live in NYC, I started calling people, but all circuits are busy, and all I can do is watch, hopelessly, without any chance of helping... ..I find out several years later two of my friends, Kirsten and Nathan went down to help. G-d Bless Them.

The WTC is a building I hadn't just visited once, I had dined at the top of the tower, worked inside building custom aquariums for managers in some of the larger offices. I knew people there, I knew a lot of people there.

About 2 hours after this tragedy I got a phone call. I just lost my job as Art Director, because my boss at Brinestone was a retired Sniper, and was called to active duty. To make this worse, the investors whom we were signing with to start the company were in the first plane. I have no job, no future, what the hell am I going to do.

Over the next few weeks I started working with other members of the company, rewriting story-lines, changing little things so we can keep working on it. However, like the WTC, it's gone, and I need to get on with making money to live.

It was at this time my wife suddenly could also no longer work. She some how had lost 3 discs of cartilage in her spine. I kept trying to work, but she kept needing me at the house. She couldn't walk, and more. We did what we had to survive, and that's all we did. Survive. No life, no pleasure, heck, at times we had $5 to eat for 2 people for the whole week!!!

Time passes, we are finally so poor, no stocks, bonds, nothing at all, that we get medical assistance for my wife. We spend weeks in and out of hospitals while I read about nutrition, and gardening and then I found an odd little video on YouTube about this guy called, "Fukuoka" and how he was growing vegetables under his fruit and nut trees, without chemicals. I had found Permaculture.

Time passes, and fortune smiles upon us, my wife was given a present, a down payment for a home. My wife and I talk, and learn about Permaculture, and finally move to Oregon trying to put the pain behind us, that was almost 3 years ago.

Now, I have fruits, & nut trees, vegetables growing, with my chickens. Deer walk through my property on a daily basis, and it is peaceful, however then TV and my loved ones started talking about 9/11 again.

I am not over it. I do not know if I will ever be over it, right now I just cry at the thought of it. I had friends join up to go fight overseas, they died. I had fellow highschool students go over seas as well, they died. We fight a war overseas about 9/11, but instead invade a country for humanitarian reasons. Now, as part of the same war, we are in another country where 90% of the worlds heroine is made, and the fields aren't being burned. So much for Nixon's war on drugs I guess.

As a result of 9/11, I grew emotionally and am doing something for my community, as well as my family on this property. Why hasn't our country? We have stepped backwards as a society and creating insecurity. I believe the only way to be secure as a country is to create more Permaculture and help our fellow man, not create situations like Rep. Charlie Wilson did which created the 9/11 tragedy.

While the rest of my fellow Americans recount the tragedy and watch TV making companies rich by supporting the shows and their advertising, I am going to go outside, work in my garden, and find solutions to help my fellow Americans, & my fellow Earthlings.

Peace be with you today, and always...I can't write anymore about this today.